ine. He was also accredited with being a
great runner, and in his earlier days was said to have conquered
single-handed eight soldiers. The Emperors Charlemagne and Jovianus
were also accredited with great height and strength.

In the olden times there were extraordinary stories of the giants who
lived in Patagonia. Some say that Magellan gave the name to this
country because its inhabitants measured 5 cubits. The naturalist
Turner says that on the river Plata near the Brazilian coast he saw
naked savages 12 feet high; and in his description of America, Thevenot
confirms this by saying that on the coast of Africa he saw on a boat
the skeleton of an American giant who had died in 1559, and who was 11
feet 5 inches in height. He claims to have measured the bones himself.
He says that the bones of the leg measured 3 feet 4 inches, and the
skull was 3 feet and 1 inch, just about the size of the skull of
Borghini, who, however, was only of ordinary height. In his account of
a voyage to the Straits of Magellan, Jacob Lemaire says that on
December 17, 1615, he found at Port Desire several graves covered with
stones, and beneath the stones were skeletons of men which measured
between 10 and 11 feet. The ancient idea of the Spaniards was that the
men of Patagonia were so tall that the Spanish soldiers could pass
under their arms held out straight; yet we know that the Patagonians
exhibit no exaggeration of height--in fact, some of the inhabitants
about Terra del Fuego are rather diminutive. This superstition of the
voyagers was not limited to America; there were accounts of men in the
neighborhood of the Peak of Teneriffe who had 80 teeth in their head
and bodies 15 feet in height.

Discoveries of "Giants' Bones."--Riolan, the celebrated anatomist, says
that there was to be seen at one time in the suburbs of Saint Germain
the tomb of the giant Isoret, who was reputed to be 20 feet tall; and
that in 1509, in digging ditches at Rouen, near the Dominicans, they
found a stone tomb containing a monstrous skeleton, the skull of which
would hold a bushel of corn; the shin-bone measured about 4 feet,
which, taken as a guide, would make his height over 17 feet. On the
tomb was a copper plate which said that the tomb contained the remains
of "the noble and puissant lord, the Chevalier Ricon de Vallemont."
Plater, the famous physician, declares that he saw at Lucerne the true
human bones of a subject that must have been at least 19 feet